


Precious and New

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Critical Role: Wildemount Campaign (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 06:40:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13630782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: For the first time in Nott and Caleb's partnership, he uses Frumpkin's eyes. Nott watches over him.





	Precious and New

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for arachnophobia (the spider in question is, unusually for D&D, a normal size of spider, but it's also on someone.) Shoutout to episode five for immediately validating my extremely specific premise of 'Caleb is annoyed by bugs while seeing through his familiar,' I guess?

The village of Saint's Hollow nestled high in the mountains, in a place where the cliffs came together in great folds. Trees clung thick and stubborn to the ridges, reaching up to the clear and immense sky.

Caleb and Nott made their camp high above the town, hidden by the scraggly branches, only a hundred feet from the edge of the cliff. Nott crept up on the rim, trusting to her balance: the streets were pale shimmers, the houses tiny blobs of thatch, sending wisps of woodsmoke rising up to meet her. The cliff stretched down in endless gray, and beyond the village she could see the beginnings of the valley, the distant shining of the river, the endless green sea of the forest. Clouds shrouded the surrounding peaks.

“Pretty,” she reported back to Caleb, “but I can't see anything useful, it's too high. Should we go down?”

Caleb chewed at his lip. “I'd rather know more, if we can.”

“Well, but we _can't,_ ” she protested, gesturing at the cliff. “That's what I just said. Unless you think you can see further –”

“In a way, I can,” he said. “You know Frumpkin?”

“Of course,” Nott said, glancing around the trees. Frumpkin was a tawny shadow under the needles of a low-growing pine.

“I'm sure you've noticed he's not... an ordinary cat.”

“Well, he pops around,” Nott said. “When you... you know.” She snapped her fingers.

“Yes, exactly. Well. He's a fey creature, my familiar actually, and he isn't... always a cat, all the time. I have some things here, some charcoal and incense, and if you give me a little bit of time, an hour or so, he can be something else – a bird, perhaps.”

“And... then we'd have a bird?” Nott said, blinking at Frumpkin. He blinked back. She tried blinking at Caleb instead. Caleb sighed, rubbing at the back of his head; it made his hair stick up in tufts, like a crested bird himself.

“More than that,” he said. “Frumpkin... because he is my familiar, I can, if I concentrate, see what he sees. Hear what he hears.”

“Oh. Oh, well, that's handy.” She glanced back at Frumpkin with renewed respect. “Well, we've got plenty of time, nothing but time really. Why do you not do that all the time?”

“It's more difficult than it sounds,” Caleb said, settling himself cross-legged on the leaf-loam. He moved stiff and slow; Nott wondered how old he was, in human terms. Thirty-three, he'd said, but what that meant for humans she didn't know. He didn't seem older than her; he might just be city-soft. “And there's drawbacks – I can do very little, when I'm looking through Frumpkin in that way. I cannot hear anything myself, or see. Or defend myself, if anyone were to attack.” He coughed. “I would need you to protect me – I will be helpless.”

“Oh.” Nott crouched next to him, resting her hand on her dagger. “I can do that. I won't let anything happen to you.”

“Thank you, Nott.” He unslung his pack and began rummaging. “If you could keep watch while I do the first spell, as well – it takes a bit more than an hour, and I'll need to focus. I don't anticipate any trouble, but then, one never does.”

“Oh, I always do,” Nott corrected him dolefully, and glanced around. At the center of the clearing a mossy rock rose out of the ground like an island, with a cluster of ferns growing resolutely from a hollow in its top; she scrabbled up the side, drawing her crossbow. “Go ahead, do your magic.”

“Thank you.” He bowed his head to the fire, and smoke billowed up, scented heavy and sweet. Frumpkin drew closer, curling into Caleb's lap, and Caleb began to chant something low and husky under his breath. Nott tucked her feet up under her and scanned the woods for threats.

None came. Caleb lifted his head, holding up his finger, and the songbird perched there – Frumpkin – burbled a high thin note. “There we are,” he said. “Nott, I'll go out flying with him now. I'll be able to speak, but not to hear you.”

“Can I bring you back, somehow?” she asked, creeping off the rock again. “If something happens?”

“I'll feel it if you touch me,” Caleb said. “How about – squeeze my shoulder, very hard, if you need me to let go of him?”

“All right,” Nott said, sucking her lower lip between her teeth. “All right.”

“Thank you,” Caleb said. “I hate doing this alone. It's far less dangerous with you.”

“Well.” Nott ducked her head; her cheeks were warm. “I'll protect you.”

“Thank you,” he said again, and lifted his hand. Frumpkin launched himself into the sky, flapping wildly, and Caleb's eyes began to shine a deep and brilliant blue.

Nott waited, crouched at his side, her dagger naked in her hand. When her legs began to cramp, she stood, pacing a circle around him. Birds called in the trees, carried on the mountain wind; the shadows of the branches danced in slow sweeps across the ground. The afternoon sunlight lit Caleb's hair in amber. Nott had stolen amber once, and treasured it for years, but it was in a guardroom somewhere now, miles ago. The glow of magic was enough for his eyelashes to cast strange shadows on his cheeks. (Another scan of the clearing: no danger, nothing against which to guard.) She could see the rise and fall of his chest, the faint stirring of his lips, but only if she really stared. (Nothing dangerous coming up over the edge of the cliff, nothing swooping in from the open sky.) There was something on the side of his neck, just under the collar of his coat – some dark speck, a... spider?

“ _Ick_!” Nott glanced up at the trees above; had it fallen? Were spiders here poisonous to humans? If she had been watching the woods all this time and Caleb died to a spider bite – “Shit, shit, shit,” she whispered, and leaned in, trying to get it – it was _moving,_ of course it was moving, where had it gone, if it got under his shirt everything would just be terrible –

Caleb twitched under her hand. “Nott?” he asked, and Nott realized, like falling into ice, that she had her hand on his throat, that in the attempt to pin the spider she had her claws on the delicate skin over the vein. Where he could feel it. That he was a human, and she was a stinking murderous goblin, and that that they were strangers to each other, and that all she had to do right now was dig her fingers in and he would be dead under her hand.

“There's a spider!” she yelped. “I'm trying to – I'm not – I won't hurt you, I don't want to hurt you, please believe me, I don't want to hurt you, I'm just trying to – trying to –”

Caleb didn't answer. Caleb didn't answer, because he couldn't hear her, because his eyes were still a brilliant blue, and he was still looking defenselessly through Frumpkin. He couldn't hear her. He hadn't come back.

“Nott?”

“There's a spider,” Nott repeated uselessly, and carefully, so carefully, closed her claws around it. It was so tiny she could barely feel it on her skin. She lifted it away, feeling Caleb's breath brush the back of her hand.

“Thank you,” Caleb said. “I don't know what that was, but it was starting to itch.”

Nott breathed out.

She dropped the spider onto the fern-crusted rock. It was a little thing, out in the woods where it belonged, and meant no harm to anyone; it might not even be poisonous at all. The fire burned low, and she built it up again, using dry wood so the smoke wouldn't declare them to the town. The sun sank into the beginnings of evening, the light lying long and golden on the ground. Caleb stirred, stretching out his arms.

“You're back!” Nott glanced around. “Where's Frumpkin?”

“He'll be back in a few minutes,” Caleb said, trying to stand; he collapsed back with a grunt. “Ah, fuck.” Caleb swore more matter-of-factly than anyone else Nott had ever known.

“Here,” she said, offering him her hands. She had to sway absurdly far back on her heels to counterbalance him at all, but together they got him to his feet. “Does this usually happen?”

“I've never been out with him for this long before,” Caleb admitted, rubbing at his hair. “I hope I never do it again.”

“I'm sorry if I scared you, earlier,” Nott offered, tapping illustratively at her own throat. “You had a spider, just here, that's all – I didn't want to leave it there.”

“Not at all,” Caleb said. “Thank you for getting rid of it. Ugh.” He grimaced. “I don't like spiders, believe me, I'm perfectly happy not to have them on my throat.”

“Could you not have done anything about it, if it itched?” Nott asked. “I mean, I don't mind doing it, but – you could talk, can you not move?”

“I could probably have moved,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. “It's difficult, and I'm afraid I'm not... very practiced with this. It didn't occur to me to try.”

“It seems like a good trick,” Nott ventured. “Did you see anything useful?”

“I did,” he said, stretching his hands out to the fire, “and it is a good trick, but as I said, it does make me... very helpless.” He smiled down at her. Even without magic, his eyes were blue and clear. Nott still wasn't used to the whites of human eyes. “Perhaps now that you're here I can practice it a bit more.”

“Oh.” Nott tried not to smile – humans usually got scared when she smiled – but she couldn't really help it. Caleb looked... a little taken aback, maybe, a bit surprised, but he didn't pull away (or pull a knife on her), and after a moment he smiled back.

“Now,” he said, “let's see if we can heat up some dinner.”

“Of course.” Nott pulled out the packs, and Caleb set about the cooking; humans had so many strange expectations for food. Nott sat by the packs, watching the edges of the clearing still.

Nott had stolen a great many delicate things, in her life: a robin's egg, a bolt of lace as fine as spiderweb, a blown-glass vase the size of her head yet light as breath against her palms. She had cupped each one in her clawed hands, thanking all her twitchy goblin grace for the ability to hold it safe. Caleb's life, as he bent over the fire, Frumpkin fluttering up over the crest of the cliff to land on his shoulder – Caleb's life seemed as precious as anything she'd ever stolen, and as fragile.

“Caleb,” she said, her voice cracking a little. It always did that; she was almost too used to it to be embarrassed. “Nobody's ever really trusted me before.”

“Really?” He looked up from spearing slivers of vegetable onto a stick. (Baffling.) Nott shrugged, wrapping her arms around her knees.

“Nobody trusts a goblin,” she said. “And before I... before I left home, nobody trusted soft little Nott.”

“I see.” Something in Caleb's face softened, and he reached out to squeeze her hand. “Well. I trust you, Nott, and thank you for watching me.”

“I always will,” Nott promised. “I won't let anything hurt you.”

“Thank you. I know you won't.” He smiled, and Nott tucked her face into her arms, every inch of her warm.


End file.
